WhatsApp

“Zuck analyses every message you send and the metadata of your contacts, and sells the analysis results to advertisers and government agencies.”

“I don't use them, besides what's app because it's difficult to avoid. It's also end to end encrypted so it doesn't really matter regarding mass surveillance.”

“Lichess and Whatsapp before FB acquisition are the biggest examples I know of making good products with limited resources.”

“WhatsApp offering an on-app opt-in model to detect scans seems like a well thought through feature, though Meta's reputation is not good on this topic”

“Yeah same can be said for Facebook and WhatsApp that Durov vehemently claims should not be trusted with user's data.”

“One of the few good things about WhatsApp is that Meta can very credibly claim that they can't access the backups”

“Recent reporting has confirmed that WhatsApps numerous promises that no one other than intended recipients has access to users communications is false.”

“Not that they're making it easier by providing source code for WhatsApp's cryptography or a debug interface to validate what's actually going on in the client”

“WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, so I'm not trusting Meta with much, and it's the only way I can reach quite a lot of people.”

“There is also so much that's truly awful about it, such as Meta vacuuming up your contact list, photos, and recording extensive telemetry.”

“Yes you cant perfectly trust their E2EE against state actors, but both in fact put some effort into making world have little bit more privacy”

“I think this is a very useful feature if the users still have the option to exchange phone numbers if they want.”

“WhatsApp probably has better security than random KYC-as-a-service vendors who upload all the documents to a publicly accessible bucket.”

“it can be a lot cheaper (e.g. for international calls) and has features (conference calls) not offered by consumer phones”

“Identifying to acquire WhatsApp & Instagram, both laughed at when bought for the acquisition price at that time, now massive businesses for Meta”

“You also won't be able to use it on a PC without a google account which is a big dealbreaker compared to Whatsapp and Signal.”

“all the while placing uncountable many calls to their great-grandchildren because they opened up some random app by accident”

“every feature that Meta has added to justify charging (AI, stories, profiles, etc), makes the product worse for me”

“Those of us with family in other countries save a lot of money by using Whatsapp and similar instead of phone calls.”

“Centralized proprietary software on on proprietary platforms can always be opted into a special update that makes all the private keys deterministic”

“It does just offer an easy, secure way of contacting people using their phone number, through text, voice, images, video.”

“I've used WhatsApp with several users in the UAE. The end-to-end encryption notice appeared on my side as always in user-to-user communication.”

“If a member of the group "Reports" a message to WhatsApp, a copy of the recent messages in that chat is decrypted and sent to WhatsApp”

“If I can log into whatsapp on a new device and old messages aren’t encrypted then they have a copy of your key and it is not true e2e encryption.”

“The WhatsApp mobile app doesn't have that problem, as it is distributed as an archive by a third party (Play Store).”

“WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol, and there is zero evidence of them reading message contents except with the consent of one of the users involved”

“Meta still tracks analytics which isn't good for privacy, but I'm not aware of any news of them or 3rd parties reading messages without consent”

“I've been quite a few places where it's impossible to buy a sim card that doesn't give you free facebook and WhatsApp.”

“WhatsApp remains unblocked in Russia, when all other major messengers except Telegram and Meta's own products all got banned there?”

“each member's client would show the new member's presence and would not share prior messages, only future messages.”

“It only takes one engineer in all the teams at Whatsapp that has different directives to make all your privacy work completely useless.”

“Zuck didn't buy it in good faith. It wasn't "we'll grow you big by using our resources but be absolutely faithful to the privacy terms you dictate"”

“the app in question has been thoroughly reverse engineered and you can freely check for yourself that it's using the same protocol as Signal for encryption”

“it is more reliable than SMS and generally there is a better 1:1 mapping between whatsapp accounts and real humans than phone numbers”

“Even scammers aren't trying their luck over RCS in any way significant compared to Telegram, WhatsApp, or even iMessage.”

“People who don’t need all the features of Slack could just use something free like Signal, WhatsApp, Matrix, Discord, etc”

“yeah whatsapp and spotify are super ubiquitous these days but they're literally not required to get in touch with me”

“One platform is owned and run by a trillion-dollar corporation with a long history of privacy violations, data breaches, coverups, and security issues”

“WA as it stands is one of the most secure and widely used applications in the world, has had an almost impollute historical record”

“WhatsApp has major advantages over SMS/MMS, including high-quality media, group chats that actually work, free international messaging”